Ian Fleming, RIP & heart disease

If you follow with any attention at all the James Bond movies, you are probably aware that they are based on books, which were written by the late Ian Fleming, a British journalist who served in naval intelligence during WWII. He was born in 1908, so this year marks the centenary of his birth. As part of the centenary activities, the British Heart Foundation is trying to raise awareness (and money) to combat heart disease. The rationale is that Fleming died of a heart attack. Although he was athletic as a youth, never obese, and kept active throughout his life with activities like snorkeling at his villa in Oracabessa, Jamaica, he was an avid smoker and drinker. His first biographer John Pearson records in Alias James Bond-The Life of Ian Fleming this medical assessment by a "New York heart specialist whom Fleming, unbeknownst to his friends, visited in the autumn of 1946":

This write-up was 18 years(!) before his death by heart attack on today's date, August 12, 1964. At 56 years old, Fleming was quite young, even for a time when people had shorter life expectancies. He left behind a wife who divorced her husband to be with him and a 12-year-old son.

series

A series is a collection of related posts, sort of like a series of articles in a newspaper. It may be ongoing, or a short collection of only a few posts. When you click on a link, posts will appear in reverse-chronological order, so you need to go to the beginning if something doesn't make sense.

Books for Nurses : reviews of "extracurricular" reading I think would be good for nurses and other health care workers. These should improve understanding of medicine and health care, help improve job skills, or change the way you think about health issues. For a complete listing of media reviews, see the library tag.

The Sexy Nurse Report : series of posts juxtaposing the silly sexual images of nurses produced in the media with the unsexy reality of nursing work...

ResearchBlogging : series of posts focusing on scientific research that are cross-posted at the ResearchBlogging.org website. Also see my profile there.

Orientation & 1st Year of Nursing : series of posts relating to my entry into the nursing profession after nursing school: NCLEX exam, hospital orientation, newbe experiences on the job...

Nursing School : series of posts documenting my experience in nursing school. Most of the several hundred posts I have up are from while I was in nursing school, but this series are the ones that I wrote specifically about school while I was a student nurse.